Aspyr today released a two level multiplayer demo of Medal of Honor: Breakthrough, the latest expansion pack for the popular World War II first person shooter. The demo, which weighs in at 189 MB, is available for download at our sister site, Macgamefiles.com.

Here's a bit more info about the expansion pack:

In Medal of Honor Allied Assault Breakthrough you take the role of Sergeant John Baker, a tough-as-nails infantryman in the 34th “Red Bull” Division. Baker’s ready attitude and extraordinary composure under fire got him “volunteered” for many extraordinary missions. His skills and battlefield wits got him through them, even when losses in his company were catastrophic. As Baker, you’ll join the American push across the deserts of Northern Africa and through the central mountains of Italy toward Rome. You’ll find yourself in the path of Germany’s famed Afrika Korps Panzers, under fire on the beach at Sicily, and hammering your way into the natural fortress of Monte Cassino. Few paths in history have been so hard to follow. You’ll cross uncharted battlefields and encounter an all-new range of enemies and weapons. Also, a new multiplayer game mode awaits, complete with new soldier classes.

In our story Wednesday on the 2004 Apple Design Awards, we neglected to mention the award taken by our friends at graphics card maker ATI Technologies. The award was "Best Performance Demo of a Shipping Product" and the company took both the winner and runner-up categories with the release of their SmartShader 2.0 demos "Animusic’s Pipe Dream" and "Rendering with Natural Light."

IMG originally reported on the release of these and other demos back in February, but anyone with the proper hardware who hasn't downloaded and tried them out should be sure to do so. The winning entries both require at least a Radeon 9600 or higher in order to view.

Here's the description for the Animusic demo telling how they took this pre-rendered animation and turned it into a real-time 3D demonstration of their hardware's capabilities:

Pipe Dream, created by Animusic, was first shown as a non-real-time animation in the Electronic Theatre at Siggraph 2001. With this demonstration we show the raw horsepower of RADEON 9800, showing that last year's offline renderer is this year's real-time demo. The scene consists of over half a million polygons lit using per-pixel lighting techniques; use the W key to check out the wire-frame of the demo to show the scene complexity. Phong shading is used globally to give nice smooth lighting and highlights. Along with the lighting, shadows are another important feature of the demo. Take particular note of the dynamic shadows cast by the balls. Also take note of the environment mapping used for the balls, cymbals, and other metal to give a nice shiny appearance. The other important feature used by this demo is Full Scene Anti-Aliasing, which softens the "jaggies" from all the harsh lines in the scene.

Inside Mac Games has posted a hands-on sneak preview of Rise of Nations, the upcoming real-time strategy game from MacSoft.

Here's a clip from the preview:

At first glance, Rise of Nations looks very much like Age of Empires II, but first glances can be most deceiving. Sure, RoN features 18 historically accurate nations, the ability to advance nation technology through various ages and of course, real-time combat, but that’s only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. RoN also takes elements from the turn-based strategy genre and melds them into traditional RTS gameplay. For example, the single-player campaign mode is very reminiscent of the classic board game, Castle Risk.

Apple has posted a new feature on Aspyr's just-released Shrek 2, the game based on the record mashing motion picture from DreamWorks. In the game you play as Shrek and 4 of his pals (both familiar and new), as they go adventuring through their twisted fairytale world. Discover new locations full of danger, monsters and challenging puzzles while using each character’s special abilities to survive.

Here's a clip from the feature:

Like the film, the game opens with Shrek and his wife, Fiona, getting ready to go see her parents, who don’t know that she’s really an ogre, as revealed in the first movie. While the game largely follows the sequel’s plot, it often diverges from the story, giving you many opportunities to see parts of Far, Far Away not shown in the film. In fact, before your trip to see Fiona’s parents even start, bandits steal a wheel off your wagon, forcing you to defeat them to get it back.